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5/6 TPW Open Thread Saturday (slight update)

Today is Derby Day…but there’s other news and some levity as well. We’ll start with Lee Camp, who with comedic talent, gives us the rundown of this past week’s news in his show, Redacted Tonight. Among the highlights, Obama’s “back wages” from Wall Street, and DNC’s folly in the current class action lawsuit.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CZRA6XuLw4[/embedyt]

Update: Congrats to Always Dreaming, winner of the 143rd Kentucky Derby! As by custom at my house after the race, we always play this tune by Dan Fogelberg.

Some of you may remember that some of the lending practices of Countrywide were extremely questionable in overcharging PoC:

Here is the ugly story made brief. According to Justice, Countrywide overcharged more than 200,000 black and Hispanic borrowers for their loans. About 10,000 were sold risky subprime mortgages, even though their finances were good enough to qualify for cheaper prime rates. Black customers who obtained their mortgages through a Countrywide-affiliated broker were more than twice as likely to get a subprime loan than similar white borrowers. In some markets, they were as much as eight times more likely.

The government argues that Countrywide’s internal data monitoring should have tipped management off that discrimination was occurring. But the company did nothing until 2008, when regulators forced its hand. At that point, it only compensated a small number of the customers who had been cheated.

We can’t know the motives of each and every Countrywide employee responsible for such a systemic failure. But we can know the circumstances they were working under. In those circumstances, discrimination was profitable.

…
While Conservatives are playing political chess and thinking several moves ahead, Democrats are playing political checkers, and focusing on short term excuses for losing the election – like the Russian email hacks – which as Norman Soloman pointed out, gives them a pretext to continue to blame their defeat on the Russians, rather than the fact that they ran candidates who put Wall Street over Main Street.

It is precisely this embrace of neoliberalism that has caused the Democratic Party’s long, slow slide into irrelevance. Back in the 1960’s, half the registered voters claimed to be Democrats; today, 29% do. Republicans have been hovering somewhere near 25% during the same period, while winning elections.

The reason Republicans win as a minority Party is because Democrats have embraced neoliberalism and rejected true progressivism and the New Deal. …

I have one slight quibble with this. It is true in general that the Democrats are lacking a long term strategy. However the Clintons are the exception. Their carefully conceived plan to maintain Hillary’s political power is rolling out. First it was trotting out the surrogates to deflect the blame for her inept campaign and her multiple weaknesses as a candidate. Next a supposed seclusion period when in reality she was plotting her next moves. Now she rolls out her new Pac.I am afraid to see what comes next.

Yes. If you read the whole article, you’ll see that he’s speaking of us Bernie types. That we need to start strategizing. He lists ways that the Republicans have made work. And his alternative is to start a new party. But he says we really have to get going on some radical pushback because it’s slipping away.

i meant to say his LAST alternative is to start a new party. he wants us true progressives to start funding think tanks and all the other things that the Republicans have done to create an infrastructure that became solid building blocks and is why they are dominant in elected offices (and the MSM, of course). But part of the reason for the MSM is that they’ve built this whole circular web of beliefs (along with our own neolibcons) about how great the market is, how bad govt. is, yada, yada. Say if often enough and the MSM picks it up and of course the MSM loves neolibs anyway, so it won’t be easy.

anyhoo, i like what he’s saying and would be glad to help but we likely could use some wealthy patrons and people who know how to get these things going. or something. :O)

we are starting to confront neolibs at Town Halls, although it’s mostly aimed at Repubs for now. and we are starting to run Berniecrats for local offices–I’m proud to support one who’s running for county commissioner.

But it would be awesome if we built up this yuuuuge web of institutions that started giving all the people hungry for change a real platform and easy messages.

The televisions in public areas at the Health and Human Services Department headquarters in Washington have been switched to Fox News. Now the same change appears to have applied to other HHS buildings, including Food and Drug Administration buildings in Maryland.

According to two people who work at the agency, the televisions at the Hubert Humphrey building had previously rotated among the three main cable channels every three days or so. But since shortly after the Trump administration took over, the televisions have been on Fox News.

Former President Jimmy Carter will sit down for a conversation Monday evening with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders that will be live streamed on the Carter Center’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/cartercenter).

Focusing on “important human rights issues,” the sure-to-be lively exchange is scheduled to start at 6:20 p.m. A highlight of Day One of the Carter Center’s annual Human Rights Defenders Forum, it is not open to the public.

“We continue to believe that a negotiated settlement is in the best interests of all parties and we are prepared to work toward that end,” Ross said in a statement obtained by Reuters.

“Threats of retaliatory action are inappropriate and will not influence any final determinations,” he continued.

A day earlier, Trudeau said in a letter to the premier of British Columbia that he was seriously considering banning U.S. firms from exporting thermal coal from ports in the Pacific coastal province.

The threat came 10 days after the Trump administration tariffs of up to 24 percent on Canadian softwood lumber exports to the U.S. Lumber producers in the U.S. have long complained that Canadian producers receive government subsidies, lowering the price of lumber produced in Canada.

I had no idea there was a Wikileak of the memo of the Wall St. guy who sent it to Podesta who was running Obama’s transition team and almost or maybe every NAME on the LIST of “suggestions” for his cabinet. They BECAME the cabinet!

Slow newz day: everyone was focused on the Kentucky Derby. 🙂 Like the winner’s name: Always Dreaming. My pick to show (I don’t gamble) came in third: Battle of Midway. Talk about a sloppy track! It freaked one horse out so bad, his jockey had to pull him out of the race. I have always loved horses and rode in my (much) younger days. They are among the prettiest creations in nature. T and R to the usual suspects!!

But she lost. And she still wants us to feel bad about that. And, worse, she’s still blaming everyone else.

On Tuesday at the Women for Women conference, she reminded us again what a flawed candidate she was last year — and what a flawed person she has always been.

In her talk before a friendly audience, Clinton said she’s writing a memoir — and said it’s “painful” to revisit how Donald Trump beat her like a ragdoll in an election that was a lock.

Painful? We’re the ones in pain, Hillary. You’re making millions to process it. We’re the ones living it.

She also said she would discuss the mistakes she made during the campaign — then declined to mention even one. Instead, she fell back on the usual suspects: The Russians and FBI Director James Comey, who indeed meddled in the election at the last minute.

“If the election had been on Oct. 27, I would be your President,” she said.

Sorry, Simon & Schuster may want Hillary Clinton to write the history, but I’m not about to let her re-write it. No one deserves more blame for the election debacle than Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Snip

So, no, I don’t understand why a publishing firm would give Hillary Clinton millions of dollars to not even admit her mistakes. (Full disclosure: I have three far-more-interesting books that Simon and Schuster can have for a fraction of Clinton’s advance, including “Bad Seeds” (an unpublished novel), “Hitler Would Have Double-Parked” (an unpublished novel) and “Publish My Unpublished Novel” (an unpublished novel). So I don’t see why we can’t make a deal.)

The American public does not want a book from Hillary Clinton. It wants an abject apology. And it wants it for free. She got what she deserved: She lost.

There are 10 million people in North Carolina, and 9 million hogs. Judging by the smell, the hogs are winning. Or, rather, the giant corporate factory hog farms are. Hogs are the largest agricultural product of the Tarheel State, adding at least $2 billion to the economy there. How the hogs are raised and slaughtered, and how the waste is handled, is making life miserable for many North Carolinians. Billions of gallons of pig feces and urine are collected in lagoons, mixed with blood and rotting pig body parts. To keep these fetid ponds from overflowing, the toxic liquid is pumped skyward with enormous spray devices, aerosolizing the waste, which is carried away by the wind. Neighbors suffer indescribably bad odor and an array of illnesses. The notoriously regressive Republican majority in the North Carolina statehouse has passed a bill—H.B. 467, Agriculture and Forestry Nuisance Remedies—to protect the factory hog farming industry from liability, which the state’s recently elected Democratic governor has yet to sign—or veto. In the meantime, impacted communities, mostly African-American, are fighting back.

Oregon also just passed a law favoring factory farms, in particular Tillamook, the brand newcomers and tourists love, and I’ll admit, I’ve bought a few of their big blocks of white cheddar when they’re on sale, who got approval for those huge lagoons of waste. Tillamook, sells ridiculously overpriced dairy products. They say they don’t use BST, but they also put a lot of money into the campaign to not list GMOs.

So sad, I remember my dad taking us all to visit the factory when I was quite little (with the family), before raising dairy cattle became the behemoth industry that it is today. I hear (from my friend who’s worked in family farm nonprofits) that Organic Valley is still decent and fairly local. I’ll have to ask about Umpqua.

The cost of the race between Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel is going to shatter the previous recorded high of $29.6 million — set in Palm Beach County, Fla., in 2012 by former GOP Rep. Allen West, former Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy and outside groups, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The $29.7 million total in Georgia, compiled by a source tracking media spending in the district, only includes money spent on TV ads.

But the campaigns and outside groups are also pumping millions of dollars into get-out-the-vote activities, mailers, radio and more. And the runoff Election Day is still six weeks away, on June 20.

“It’s entirely possible that by the time the books are closed on this race, there will be over $40 million spent in the special and in the runoff,” said Chip Lake, a Republican strategist who works in Georgia. “I’m at a loss for words.”

Republican Bruce Rauner insisted he had no social policy agenda when he campaigned for Illinois governor in 2014, and even showcased his socially liberal wife in TV ads to prove it. Earlier this year, the governor took another step to remind his blue-state constituents of his distance from the national GOP: He and his wife cut a $50,000 check to Planned Parenthood.

But if Rauner thought that would insulate him from the roiling abortion politics of the moment, he was wrong. After announcing recently he’ll veto abortion legislation known as HB40, the governor is caught up in a maelstrom that threatens to derail his reelection in 2018.

The HB40 conflict centers on a Democratic-sponsored measure to keep abortion legal in Illinois if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade and calls for expanding abortion coverage under Medicaid and in state worker health plans.

The bill put Rauner, who supports abortion rights, in a vise. Despite being governed by Democrats for years, Illinois is one of a handful of states that has “trigger” language on the books that threatens to automatically make abortion illegal if the high court overturns Roe. So if the governor vetoes the measure, it opens him to criticism that he isn’t a committed supporter of abortion rights at a time when President Donald Trump’s abortion policies have raised alarms.

Rather than reflecting on the consternation everyday voters are having over the conduct of the Democratic presidential primary, the Democratic National Committee is doubling down on the assertion that the primary election belongs to the people who control the party — not voters.

In the transcript for last week’s hearing in Wilding, et. al. v. DNC Services, d/b/a DNC and Deborah “Debbie” Wasserman Schultz, released Friday, DNC attorneys assert that the party has every right to favor one candidate or another, despite their party rules that state otherwise because, after all, they are a private corporation and they can change their rules if they want.

The argument is not without merit. In fact, it is a legally sound argument that has rarely been overcome in the court of law, where courts are extraordinarily hesitant to get involved in the “political thicket.”

The last time the court rejected the “private party rights” argument was in 1944 when, despite the Democratic Party’s objections, the court held that the party had to let African-Americans participate in “their” primary. (See, Smith v. Allwright) (bold is my emphasis)

In that case, the court sided with the protections of the Fifteenth Amendment, holding that the exclusion of blacks from the Democratic primary violated their fundamental right to vote at meaningful stages of the election process.

In this case, a group of Bernie Sanders supporters filed a class action lawsuit against the DNC and former DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz because, they argue, they were denied a fair and impartial election and had given money to a campaign on the belief that it was fair and impartial.

In other words, the plaintiffs are relying on laws that impose a fiduciary obligation on corporations to protect their shareholders and protect against tortious conduct like misrepresentation, not fundamental rights secured by the constitution.

But the Democratic Party’s argument remains the same as it did over 70 years ago.

Nothing in recent history can match the sorry spectacle of a sitting president so desperate for adoration and so indifferent to actual governing that the only satisfaction he can get is from perpetuating the campaign.
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Yet Mrs. Clinton, a person of greater substance, also seems unable to shake free.

This week, in a conversation with Christiane Amanpour, the television journalist, Mrs. Clinton was asked about Mr. Trump’s approach to North Korea and Syria, and about women’s rights around the world. Her insights were strained by insinuations against the president, whom she still refers to as “my opponent.”

snip

After being asked about the election, she suggested that Mr. Trump’s campaign had coordinated with Moscow, a clear and disturbing possibility that is under investigation, but is as yet unproven. Attributing her loss to a decision by James Comey, the F.B.I. director, to notify Congress on Oct. 28 about a newly discovered cache of Clinton emails, she said, citing conclusions of the polling analyst Nate Silver, “If the election had been on Oct. 27, I’d be your president … remember, I did win more than three million votes than my opponent, so it’s like, really?”

Mr. Comey’s actions, as well as Russia’s, merit continued scrutiny. But coming from Mrs. Clinton, given her own unforced (but largely unacknowledged) errors in the campaign, such accusations can sound merely like excuses. And they play into Mr. Trump’s obvious ambition to keep last year’s campaign front and center.

As Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton bait each other, their supporters light up social media, re-litigating the old disputes and attacking one another, too. What’s the point? Mr. Trump is now president of the United States, while Mrs. Clinton has the opportunity to represent the aspirations of her party rather than its grievances.